Marco Oppedisano’s a highly imagistically abstract experimental guitarist-composer-noiseur (include piano, voice, and percussion in that, too) in Brooklyn, New York, and Resolute is his latest release after a much too long quietus, his last effort having emerged in 2010. This new affair arrived quite fortuitously to my attention, as I’d at the moment been listening to Escapade’s duetoafaultypremonition, a satisfyingly experimental noisy affair as well, though definitely zoned-hippie as compared to Marco’s neoclassicalism. His 5-track 21+-minute EP demonstrates the marked contrast in myriad differences between a single highly disciplined musician and a very cool mess of on-the-fly players like Escapade, a sextet.

Marco’s work has long been mindful me of an unusual conflation of any number of past influences: Morton Subotnick (who teaches or taught at the same school as Oppedisano), Morphogenesis, Faust, Cluster, PBK, and a collage of others…but also of an obscure 80s cat, John Wiggins, an HBO sound engineer who released a series of extremely three-dimensional, sonically pristine, found-sound/noise/avant-garde issuances. Oppedisano’s masterful control of his recordings immediately harkens back to Wiggins’ equally painstaking documentations, as do the highly variant sounds residing in a spacey quadrant nonetheless redolent with terrene landscapes.

Should you not be quite as zoned as me and other prognacious bastards, be neither esotericized nor daunted by citations of past-master sonic surrealists because there are elements of Fripp & Eno’s groundbreaking duet work present as well, the opening cut, “Breathe”, a kind of cross between later King Crimson and No Pussyfooting, with a good deal of avant-prog continuing as the quintet of songs progresses. A couple decades ago, I coined the term ‘incidentalist’ to embrace this ilk of work, as everything here is episodic amid individual elements of short duration, yet holds together magically, far more so than the term might suggest.

This is not easy art to produce as its qualities are the most esoteric in all sound production, rooting ultimately in John Cage and the 60s Nonesuch electronicist pioneers, not to mention the remarkable ONCE Festivals, and that’s precisely why I cover it: because, goddammit!, there’s nowhere near enough material on this level being produced, and there should be far FAR more. Evolution depends on it!…or at least the hedonistic satieties of sonic omnivores like myself and hopefully you.

1) Marco Oppedisano – Resolute
A composer that has laid out a huge canvas, then proceeded to weave a sonic landscape that changes its terrain at every twist and turn. Multiple listens are required to truly get a sense of what has been accomplished here.
For me this release represented someone who truly threw caution to the wind and took a chance at reaching forward with both hands and ears.
My sincerest and heartfelt love of this proves that there is great music being made.

Holiday surprise, as without warning I’m putting out this album featuring some of my own texture-focused ambient electronic tracks. I’d been sitting on it for a while and the time felt right…heck, it’s Spectropol’s 40th album!

Winding is a collection of tracks recorded between 2009 and 2012. Despite marked contrasts between them they comprise a coherent playlist of “ambient” electronic music. Some of the pieces work well for meditation, others are themselves meditations on sounds or ideas. Many of the works employ continuous slow-change forms and drones, others are keyboard-centered and have faster moving harmonies; some employ field recordings and most embrace noise. Microtonal elements are also present throughout, in different forms, including just intonation (this, muuf, window, furse, koni); mixed tunings (hoomz, hae, ronqq), and micro-inflections (elegy, furse, ronqq, dropov). As a whole I think of it as an ambient album realized with an avant-garde electroacoustic aesthetic.

Spectropol Records is pleased to announce a new EP of music by NYC guitarist and composer Marco Oppedisano. This project, titled resolute, is Oppedisano’s first solo release of electroacoustic music since 2010. The EP is composed of five compelling tracks based on electric guitar, electric bass, percussion, voice and piano. As in much of his previous work, the resulting music is a kind of electric-chamber/concrete hybrid rich with timbral, contrapuntal, gestural and harmonic detail. There’s an unwavering energy through these tracks that speaks to the title, a sense of direction and tonal focus even through contrasting sections, making the EP into what feels like a unified statement.

resolute is available as a $7 limited edition CDR and $5 digital download at the Spectropol bandcamp site, where it can be freely streamed.

Spectropol is pleased to announce the availability of another fine collection from Polish artist Marcin Tomczak.
An unidentified space; a surreal electroacoustic chamber music full of vibrant color and complex emotion.

We are delighted to provide the wider international release of Iranian composer/electronic musician Ehsan Saboohi’s Chaos in the Cosmos. The album is available as a digital download and comprises two fascinating experimental tracks, microtonal and hypnotic, weaving tapestries of sculpted sound.

From Mr. Saboohi: “Chaos in the Cosmos” (Shahr-âshub in Persian) is an experimental music inspired by the well-known components of Iranian culture such as literature, miniatures, calligraphies and the art of carpet. Being aware that meta narratives have no place in today’s world, it is aimed to be a micro narrative of the Persian traditional poetry and music.

Chaos (Âshub) is a metaphor for the invention and discovering the new disciplines and Cosmos (Shahr) is a metaphor for the established disciplines.

We respect other nations’ music and believe that what constitutes the future of the music is a dialogue between the contemporary and traditional music. Thus, we look at the western music from the second half of 20th century (from1950 onward) and consciously bracket all the appeal of tonal music in order to rediscover the harmonics and non-harmonics of the music by itself.

This is the unedited outcome of the impromptu meeting of Tetuzi Akiyama on acoustic guitar and Johan Arrias on alto saxophone, on a Sunday morning in a minuscule Stockholm living room. Having toured and recorded together years before in a quartet format with the formidable Gul 3, the musicians knew each other well, but this was their first duo session.No preset parameters here. After a glass of black coffee and slightly diverging words on the structure ­- one long piece or shorter ones? ­- Johan shoves a plastic bottle down the bell of his alto, Tetuzi strokes a string, and they’re off. No distinct melodies or rhythms, yet the music flows with a gentle insistency and retains a strong sense of direction and purpose throughout, its beauty heightened by moments of dissonance. At times reminiscent of a koto-­shakuhachi dialogue, the core feeling is one of deep trust and respect. Every note, every sound counts. In the room, in the moment. Slow breathing, just as Tetuzi had suggested.

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Tetuzi Akiyama plays the guitar with primitive and practical implications, by adding a desire of own to the instrument’s characteristic nature in minimal and straight method. He delicately and sometime boldly controls the volume of the sound from micro to macro level, and tries to quantize his physical system.

Besides making variety of solo albums which covers from fingerpicking and slide acoustic guitar atonalism to noisy experimental drone to never ending boogie, he have made many albums in collaboration with highly praised artists such as Jozef Van Wissem, Donald McPherson, Greg Malcolm, Bruce Russell, Günter Müller, Jason Kahn, Michel Henritzi, Phantom Limb, Gul3, Tim Barnes, Oren Ambarchi, Martin Ng, Anla Courtis and Alan Licht, just to name a few. He is also a band member of Koboku Senjû, Satanic Abandoned Rock & Roll Society and Hontatedori.

Akiyama is a frequent guest at international music festivals in East & West Europe, North & South America, Australia and New Zealand in recent years.

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Johan Arrias is a saxophone and clarinet player active in the field of improvised, experimental and contemporary music. He works with deconstructing and fragmenting the traditional play on his instrument with extended techniques and preparation, regarding sound as an autonomous matter. This has led him to also start working with sound art. When composing music he moves freely from traditional to graphic notation and concepts.

The Digipaks of Joe Evans’ compelling new Spectropol release are here and ready to ship. Designed by Evans, the CDR packages are very attractive and sell for only $11 plus shipping (includes digital download).

The third installment in Spectropol’s microtonal compilation series, this collection is another highly varied snapshot of current xenharmonic practice from international artists. As with the previous albums in the series, the stylistically diverse tracks here explore just intonation, equal divisions of the octave, mixed tunings, fretless instruments, and extended playing techniques.

The music here ranges from chamber ensemble spectralism to catchy electronica, from surreal soundscapes to strange funk, intimate classical guitar work to electric feedback, and from free improvisation to evolving drones.

Spectropol Records is delighted to announce the release of Septimal by UK composer Joe Evans. A 46-minute album available as a Digipak CDR and high quality download, Septimal features fourteen superlative tracks that explore the sonic and expressive potential of the autoharp.

Joe Evans writes: “While I initially conceived of Septimal as a study of microtonal harmony, it has developed into something far more complex and personal.

The word Septimal, meaning “Pertaining to all things Seven” is not widely used outside of the world of scales and temperaments, where it refers to intervals derived from the 7th harmonic. These intervals are often poor relations of intervals derived from the 3rd & 5th Harmonics, fighting for space on an otherwise occupied keyboard. By removing any notes derived from the 5th harmonic, the space opens up to allow the character of septimal intervals to shine, a coup within the harmonic series, perhaps?

Septimal was created from recordings of improvisations on the autoharp. Each piece attempts to explore the nature of the scale as well as the character of the instrument. Each note (string) is independently tunable, making it ideal for experimental scales. In Addition, the instrument lends itself to other experiments, exploring sonic possibilities such as taps, bumps, string scrapes and other mechanical noises of the instrument that make up so much of its character. This has led to a number of pieces where the tuning is far less relevant or even obscured, although always present.

From the early stages of this project, a potential narrative became apparent, hinted at in the track titles. While I think this is better left open to interpretation, themes of abuse, tyranny and war are clearly stated.

The tracks “The Front” and “Forget me not” were among the last produced and are reflections on the war time losses of my family during World Wars 1 & 2.”

Rubio:“Last year, I became fascinated with the acoustic possibilities of the banjo in conjunction with various electronics and pedals and created a number of works that utilized these alien sounds while still warping them into folk songs of sorts. However, as I delved further into the instrument’s extended technique, I realized that there were ways to create a kind of polyphony with just the acoustics of the instrument itself and set off working on many of the pieces heard here. With these particular songs, I wanted to both play with the instrumental specificity of the banjo but also try to reduce those sounds and the formal elements of pop songs to their most basic elements. These pieces are equally indebted to the work of reductionist composers/improvisers like Tetuzi Akiyama and Taku Sugimoto as they are to the folk music of Washington Phillips and Abner Jay. As such, most of these works were built off of the raw banjo/voice material and feature minimal overdubs save for some vocal harmonies and organ on a few tracks. The banjo material on the album (tracks 1-5) is very concerned with how much of a song/sound you can remove yet still have it resemble that thing and the remaining two pieces are further non-banjo explorations of this idea. “the war on christmas” places a cynical pop song into a minimalist/modular situation notationally while the bagatelles take extremely small melodic song fragments and spreads them out very quietly over an extended period of time.”